Memory

Un bloc magique refers to Freud's comparison of the psychic apparatus to a 'mystic writing-pad' wunderblock, a child's drawing slate of layers of cellophane and a dark waxed surface. Traces of the marks pressed on the cellophane surface remain as furrows on the waxed surface even though the cellophane surface is cleared of all marks. 'The magic slate, like the psychic apparatus, thus exhibits the capacity both to retain an imprint (memory) and to clear itself for the receipt of the new marks (perception).'
(Dissemination 8-9)

Derrida cites and questions Plato's separation of live memory mneme from hypomneme. Archives are hypomneme along with inventories, citations, copies, lists and genealogies. (Dissemination 107)

'Writing does not answer the needs of memory [it] does not reinforce the
mneme, but only hypomnemesis.'(Dissemination 100)

The archives are an extension of writing, commodified by power brokers, the sophists. Socrates' words written by Plato, upheld the 'art of memory.' Writing was imperfect memory or even forgetfulness, dependent on signs; it was nonknowledge. (Dissemination 105) The recital of 25,000 lines of Homeric verse over several days was a manifestation of the living word, of knowledge, of the promise of limitless memory.